bloodyrosemccoy | Guilty Pleasures (Reply)

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I have discovered a retro series that is pure, unadulterated FANCRACK.

I Netflixed the first season of Beauty and the Beast a while back, based on the following carefully considered and researched reasons:

Ron Perlman plays a god damn LION.
In a SUIT.

After weighing all these reasons, I added it to my queue, and this weekend I watched the first four episodes. And it’s the weirdest thing: I’m not overwhelmed by it, but I can’t look away. It’s like playing Tetris. You’re not exactly having fun, but you’re stuck in front of it.

I’d like to say it’s the writing, but it’s hard to explain what I mean by that. The writing formula seems to be “add every fanfic-style wish-fulfillment trope you can.”* And they do their job admirably. What fangirl, the series asks itself, doesn’t want to identify with a character who shares a mystical bond with an outcast sex bomb** who is tormented by his leonine face—and who is nothing but gentle and cuddly to her but as soon as she finds herself in a knock-down drag-out rumble with thugs and/or ninjas,*** he’s willing to hitch a ride on the roof of the cross town express so’s he can show up in the nick of time to pull those motherfuckers’ heads off? No fangirl this show can think of, that’s for sure!

And that’s just the basic premise! In the first four episodes I found lots of other fun fan tropes! Blinded, wounded, and carried to a mysterious safe place to be nursed back to health by a Dream Guy? That opens the series! Perky independent main character completely devoid of personality? Check! Oyaji? Check! Steampunk before it was cool? No problem! Hidden sanctuary? Of course! Man-candy getting captured by villains and tortured, then wandering the city lost and wounded and unable to find help because people judge him before they know him? We devoted an entire episode to that, and threw in the Hooker With The Heart Of Gold!

It’s hard not to watch this. I’m going to have to keep getting it, for a complete guilty pleasure. It’s not a great series so far, but I also have yet to see anything that trumps the reasons for watching the show I enumerated above. If you want pure shmoopy fancrack, this is the show for you.

*Also, the show seems to have the philosophy that All Men Except For The Main Characters Are Condescending Assholes And Sometimes Also Thuggish Rapists. This may just be the ’80s showing (the ’80s shows through a lot in this series), but the Executive Story Consultant’s byline may be a clue, as it’s George RR Martin. It’s a little like watching a movie where all the women are whores or getting raped and called whores, and then finding out it was based on something by Frank Miller. “Oh,” you say.

**Shut up. Ron Perlman is a SEX BOMB. The fact that he’s desperately ugly doesn’t have anything to do with this.

***Which, given her hardcore job as an assistant district attorney, seems to be every thirty-six hours or so.